The Board remands the claim for service connection of the Veteran's cause of death to correct pre-decisional duty-to-assist errors, including obtaining a medical opinion on the relationship between the Veteran's causes of death and his presumed Agent Orange exposure.
The deciding factor: The failure to obtain necessary medical opinions regarding the Veteran's causes of death and their relation to Agent Orange exposure constitutes a predecisional error that must be corrected.
- Claimed conditions
- myelodysplastic syndrome, severe aortic stenosis, hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer)
- How they argued it
- Direct service connection
- Exposure basis
- Agent Orange / herbicides
- Rating assigned
- None in this decision
- Decision date
- March 18, 2025
- Citation
- A25024793
What this means for you
A remand is not a loss. The Board sent the case back for more development — often a new exam or missing records — before making a final decision. Many remands later end in a grant, and the decision spells out exactly what the Board wanted to see.
What you can do next
Related decisions
Other Board decisions on a similar condition or argued the same way.
- Granted
The Board granted service connection for myelodysplastic syndrome, finding that the Veteran had presumptive exposure to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune.
- Remanded (sent back)
The Board remands the matter to obtain a medical opinion regarding whether the Veteran's significant conditions at the time of his death were related to his service, including any toxic exposure risk activities (TERA), and if so, whether they had a material influence on the acceleration of his death.
- Dismissed
The Veteran's appeals for service connection and initial rating were dismissed due to an improper concurrent election of review options.
- Partly granted
The Board granted restoration of a 10 percent disability rating for the service-connected painful left knee scar, effective October 26, 2022, and remanded the issue of entitlement to service connection for myelodysplastic syndrome.
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